This article is a review of MAN OF STEEL.

“You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders,” Jor-El Now, cards on the table, I do love a strikingly made noisy blockbuster (e.g. STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS or THE AVENGERS or INDEPENDENCE DAY). However, pleasure is not derived from the nonsensical kind (TRANSFORMERS or BATTLESHIP or IRON MAN 3). How many attempts have there now been, on both the small and silver screens, at interpreting Superman? Plenty. But who knew back in 1978, that SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, directed by Richard ‘LETHAL WEAPON’ Donner, would end up being so unassailable in its craftsmanship and imagination? Thirty-five years on, and it is looking to be the unbeatable definitive version. The shadow is long. How do you top the likes of Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman and Terence Stamp? These are legends. Here Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon and Laurence Fishburne add their vast skills and gravitas, but they are hamstrung from competing by a pedestrian script. Christopher Nolan may have contributed story elements, but his fingerprints are not on this.

Opening on the planet Krypton as Superman, a.k.a. Kal-El, is born, the first natural birth after centuries we discover. The rest of the population is grown. Why? There is talk of bloodlines, nothing approaching an offer of understanding or nuance though. Also, the planet is about to be destroyed because this advanced species of humanoid have been mining the core. Jor-El (Crowe delivering a dignified performance) is the planet’s chief scientist warning the council of impending disaster. Mid-flow he is rudely interrupted by a coup, carried out by the military leader, General Zod (Shannon - injecting conflict into his character, rather than the usual maniacally sociopathic villainy). The regime change is fouled, but not before Kal-El is sent to Earth with a key bit of nonsensical biomechanical tech. What do the Council decide to do with the treacherous Zod? Put him and his gang in a massive spaceship in frozen stasis, conveniently freed when the planet implodes. At once MAN OF STEEL appears to be gunning for the mythic, and the realistic, in discovering we are not alone; but then you have Russell Crowe riding around on a four-winged dinosaur thing. A creature that even George Lucas might have balked at from using in the STAR WARS prequels. This film is neither particularly fantastical nor grounded. That celestial body detonation is reminiscent of the Vulcan tragedy in STAR TREK. This déjà vu is representative of the 143 minute runtime. There are echoes of so much other work. Where is the originality? There are too many spins on the 1978 original and the Donner cut of SUPERMAN II. There’s a SPIDER-MAN Uncle Ben moment, a THOR small town fight, BATMAN BEGINS Proustian structure, and a 2012-style cacophony of computer generated things getting destroyed. The last outing, SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006) was miscast but beautifully shot; MAN OF STEEL is the opposite. Where has the director of adrenaline-pumping action sequences disappeared? They are faulty to different degrees, but Zack Snyder’s work on 300 and WATCHMEN has zest. He’s curtailed the use of much needed slow-mo. His speeding up and winding down in 300 was stylish. MAN OF STEEL is just a bland grey-brown mush of CGI breakneck edits, where nothing seems to be happening in reality, just created in a computer, and the repercussions are inconsequential. Added to the sinking disappointment is the perfunctory dialogue, stating the obvious or actions intended; characterisation doesn’t spring, and neither does enlightenment of another world, or the wonders of another culture. As questions of logic and story elements reared up, as inane action sequences mounted up, I could feel the excitement in me evaporating.